The company behind Sydney Sweeney’s new fashion campaign finally spoke out about the “woke” backlash to its “great jeans” ads featuring the star.
American Eagle wrote in a brief statement to Instagram on Friday, “‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story.” In other words, not about “genes.”
“We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way,” the company added, concluding with the inclusive message, “Great jeans look good on everyone.”
Sweeney’s ads with the company, which play on the words “genes” and “jeans” to celebrate her both looks and the pants, had been criticized for promoting eugenics, with some social media users going so far as to liken the campaign’s messaging to “Nazi propaganda.”
Sweeney tells viewers in one ad, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”
At a time when the Trump administration has begun dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the public and private sectors, the ads struck some as a nod toward alt-right conservatism. Meanwhile, on the right, internet comments from random people have become a fixation in the news cycle—worthy of attention from Trump’s White House officials who have claimed “Democrats” are behind the supposed “woke” outrage.
No Democratic lawmakers have mentioned Sweeney’s ads publicly. But that hasn’t stopped Fox News from running so many segments on the supposed outrage this week that CNN was able to create an extended montage on Abby Phillip’s NewsNight program.
Per CNN’s Brian Stelter on X Friday, “right-wing media outlets” have taken the opportunity to “hype a left-wing ‘meltdown’ that isn’t happening” to distract from revelations about Donald Trump’s friendship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. A search for how many times Sweeney’s jeans story and Epstein’s stories were discussed on cable news this week revealed that between Monday and Thursday night, Fox News mentioned Sweeney “181 times” and only “18 times for Jeffrey Epstein.”
The White House has egged on that conversation, with Vice President JD Vance telling the Ruthless podcast Friday, “My political advice to the Democrats is, continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi.”
Trump’s communicators director Steven Cheung insisted that private citizens’ critiques of the ads are “Cancel culture run amok. This warped, moronic, and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024. They’re tired of this bulls--t.” And Ted Cruz took the opportunity to let everyone know how hot he thinks Sweeney is.
